Foreward: I have completed the game with about 11 hours played (According to Steam)
Papers, Please is what I would call “TSA Simulator”. You are a guy whose name was pulled from a labor lottery and now is working as a Immigration Inspector between Kolechia and Arstotzka (You are on the Arstotzaka side) and it is your job to process individuals that want to come into the country.
You start of easy by checking locations and as you progress through the 31 days, you will get access to features, such as the inspector button and a scanner to scan for contraband/weapons.
When you get into the late-ish game (Around Day 23+), you will start to forget stuff to check…Could be simple stuff like Gender, height, weight. That’s why you should take your time and go over everything and if you are not sure, inspect it to make sure there isn’t any discrepancies.
This is a game that I have had fun with in a long time. It took me 2 saves in order to get the good ending (Note, there is 20 different endings in Papers, Please) and you can easily complete it in 4hrs.
When you get the good ending, you will be presented with a code. This will unlock Endless Mode. Endless mode is a mode that you can have fun. There is 4 ‘courses’ and 3 modes. What you score is at the end of it, gets submitted to the Steam Community Leaderboards, where you can see how you ranked against other people.
Along your game, you will encounter people that want your help. Helping these people will affect the ending of the game. So if someone asks to let someone through because their wife is behind, you can choose yourself, whether you want to be a nice person and take a citation or stick to your guns and do your job and possibly reject them (That is ofcourse if they don’t have the correct papers)
Overall, I have enjoyed this game a lot. The art style is great, the gameplay is easy to learn and will beg you to come back and play over and over to get the other various endings.
This game gets a 9/10 for me.
It loses 1 point for content. I would like a follow up month or even more story and more mechanics. Great game otherwise.
This review will also appear on Gamers and Geeks really soon.
